


Sans Optimism in Phenomenalism

by Wilde_Shade



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:58:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wilde_Shade/pseuds/Wilde_Shade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alphys forgot her manga. Alphys forgot a lot of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phidari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phidari/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> And many thanks to prosodiical and ectotherm! prosodiical beta'd the first couple of chapters. I tried to be responsible, start early, and finish edits in plenty of time. Instead, I did what I do every year. ectotherm did a great job beta'ing like the wind. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own... or a victim of formatting. Another Yuletide tradition: me ineptly copy and pasting things.

Alphys’ claws hovered over the creased spines of manga volumes. Would it be weird if she brought the more mature additions to her collection? It wasn’t hentai – no, her Mew Mew Kissy Face doujin were deep character studies that stripped the characters down, figuratively... and literally, but only for purposes relevant to the plot.

She had read them all. That was why they were stored away in a dimensional closet with recordings of Mettaton’s early television appearances and cleaning supplies. She didn’t need any of these things. She just felt odd leaving them in the underground.

It had been mere hours since Frisk had helped to bring down the barrier. Doubtless,just about everyone else had left for the surface. The outside world was an incredible place. There was much to see, much to do… but first, Alphys needed to pack. Yes. Venturing outside required preparation.

Alphys swiped the entirety of her doujin collection into an open trash bag and cinched it shut for the journey back up top. She would just as soon stay in this cramped little closet for hours thumbing through manga she’d already read, but Undyne was waiting.

Undyne.

Alphys felt her face grow hot - an odd and somewhat worrying sensation given that she was cold-blooded.

She stepped out of the closet and into the relative noisiness of her lab. Electronics buzzed and machinery droned in low tones. Even the lighting hummed, which was odd since Alphys was fairly certain she had shut it off by the breaker when she had come back. Only the emergency lights should have been on. There was no need to waste all that electricity if no one was around to cool the Core.

Weird. Alphys shifted the bag on her shoulder and went to shut everything down for a second time when a flash of blue and white caught her eye.

The elevator gave a ding. Someone was going downstairs.

Alphys dropped her bag. She laced her claws in front of her chest. An amalgamate, maybe? A few of them had come back after she had guided them out. They were used to the lab, after all.

That was probably what it was. Alphys hoped that was what it was. And, if it was, she couldn’t just go back to the surface without them.

Alphys waited for the elevator to come back up and then took it down. She stepped out into the true lab and her anxiety left her as she watched a familiar shape vanish around a corner. “What are you doing down here?” she called after Lemon Bread. “Let’s get you back to your family, huh?”

Alphys waited for Lemon Bread to come back to the elevator, but it didn’t. Endogeny did - panting and wagging its many tails in one tangled mass.

“You too?” Alphys walked to the end of the hall. “How many of you came back?”

The only response was a sound that gave her chills.

Someone was moving things around with a kind of care and purpose that sounded far more single-minded than any amalgamate. Who could be down here? Frisk? Certainly not. Someone angry with her for what she had done? Alphys swallowed noisily and shuffled toward the sound.

It was coming from the video archive room. Alphys went in and, with no small degree of surprise, found one of the bookshelves askew. There was a rectangle of light on the floor, coming from… a secret room? Alphys approached the opening. No, not a secret room. It was an entire wing - a small one,sure, but a secret lab in her secret lab all the same.

Alphys stepped inside. She kept her arms tucked in close to her body. There was all sorts of machinery piled high and precarious amid towers of boxes and stacks of overflowing manila folders. A thin layer of dust covered everything.

One of the doors lining the hallway was open. It was from there that the noises were coming. “Hello?” called Alphys, reluctant to go further - struck with the sudden impression that she was intruding inside her own lab.

The rustling stopped, but only for an instant. A voice punctuated it. “It’s me,” the voice said, as if Alphys should know who it was.

To her surprise, she did.

“Sans?” Alphys walked to the door and peered inside. “What are you doing here? What is this place?” Her eyes were immediately drawn to the thing he appeared to be occupied with. “What is that!” It looked familiar, similar to other devices in the lab proper. All the same, she had never seen anything quite like it before.

The whole time, Sans had had his back to her, skeletal hands working at plugs on a docking station. Only now did he turn and face her. The pupils inside his otherwise empty eye sockets moved over her - up, then down. His brow bone lowered, marginally, stealing any mirth from that perpetual grin of his. Ever so slightly, his posture sagged and, instinctively, Alphys knew she had disappointed him somehow. It was body language she was familiar with.

“It’s a Gaster Blaster,” said Sans. “It’s a weapon.” He turned his back to her again.

“Oh.” Alphys watched. She waited. “What, uh… What do you need a weapon for?”

Sans detached the last plug. Free of its docking station, the Gaster Blaster began to float. Eyes flickered on inside its skull-like casing. “The human,” said Sans.

"Frisk? Sans, what… What are you talking about?” Alphys moved around the Gaster Blaster, in search of some way to power it down. Surely there was some sort of rational explanation for Sans’ behavior. She didn’t know the skeleton particularly well, but he had never struck her as the malicious sort. First though, she needed to turn the weapon off. It was making her uncomfortable. “How do I-” Alphys began but was, suddenly, reaching for air. The Gaster Blaster had vanished, leaving behind a smoky, burning smell. “Where did it go?”

Sans didn’t answer. He looked to be distracted, staring at Alphys again in the slow, appraising way from before. “How do you know the human’s name?”

“Are you feeling all right?” Alphys knew for a fact Sans had learned Frisk's name when she had. A lot had happened today, but that seemed an odd thing to forget so soon. Alphys tried a smile. “Is this a joke?” Sans did like jokes, but… no. That didn’t make sense. This wasn’t funny. Threatening Frisk wasn’t funny. “Are you all right? I know I just asked that, but… are you?”

“Are you?” Sans echoed, the inflection different. He looked to be equally puzzled.

“Where did that thing go? The… The Gaster Blaster?”

Sans took a step toward Alphys.

She took a step away.

Sans took a step back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “It can exist in several places at once. It’s… where it needs to be.”

Alphys reached for her cell phone. She didn’t know who to call or what to tell them, but she felt better holding it. “Let’s go back to the surface, okay? Undyne’s waiting for me, and your brother is probably waiting for you, so-”

“What?” Sans inclined his head, his grin still humorless. “You- Oh… oh, no.” Sans lurched for the door, breaking into a sprint

Alphys jumped. “Hey-” She turned after him. “Hold on!” She hurried around the corner, but he was already out of sight. It seemed he was deceptively fast. Alphys was not, though she went as fast as she could to the elevator. An educated guess told her that was where he had gone.

And it was, though she was surprised to find him sitting at her console, fingers flying over dials and knobs. It was a complicated setup. Mettaton had tried countless times to play movies and television shows on it and been unable to do so much as change to a different camera feed. Sans, however, seemed to be having no issues with it. He went from camera to camera then pulled up several simultaneous feeds in a grid.

The Underground was empty. Alphys came up behind Sans. She unclasped her hands a few times, considered, maybe, putting a hand on his shoulder. He was clearly distressed, and physical contact was supposed to be comforting, wasn’t it? Yes? No? No, better not. “Everyone went up top? Remember? Outside.”

Sans just shook his head. He didn’t look back at her. He pointed to one of the small screens in the corner. There, unmistakable against the stark white of SnowdIn, was Frisk.

Alphys leaned in closer. She nudged her glasses upward on her snout. “What are they doing there?”

“Backtracking. There are still some monsters left.” Sans turned the chair to face Alphys. “So, if I’m not the one mixing up my timelines…”

Alphys looked from the monitor to Sans. She stared, speechless for what felt like a very long time. “I don’t understand.” She pointed to the trash bag full of manga she had dropped on the floor. “I was getting some of my things to take up top… umm… Which were, uh, in that closet over there.”

“What closet?”

“That one. That cabinet. It opens to a… a really big dimensional box, I guess.” Already, unlikely possibilities were piling up in Alphys’ mind. “I don’t go in there very often. Nothing like this has ever happened. What is this, anyway?” She shook her head and looked at the monitor again. She reached past Sans and made the Snowdin feed take up the entire screen. There was a plastic knife in Frisk’s hand, dust on their clothes. “There has to be some sort of explanation,” said Alphys, because it felt like something one was supposed to say in this sort of situation. Deep down, she had a niggling feeling, though.

Everything had been too wonderful. ‘Wonderful’ didn’t happen to Alphys. She didn’t deserve it.

“I think… I think I need to sit down.” Alphys groped for the arm of the chair, which Sans quickly vacated. He pushed it toward her and she sank into it. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” said Sans. “Not completely.”

Silence stretched out between them. Alphys’ mind swam with visions of alternate dimensions, of realities on top of realities, of limitless possibilities. Detached, she observed herself, sitting in a chair that was and was not her own, in a lab that was and was not her own.

“I’m sorry.” Sans put a hand on her shoulder.

Alphys looked back to the monitor. The feed had followed Frisk out of Snowdin, where they happened upon Gyftrot and- “No!” Alphys stood so fast, her chair toppled. “What are they doing?”

“What humans do.”

“Not Frisk!” Alphys snapped. She knew Frisk. This thing wasn’t Frisk. “We have to do something!”

“I am,” said Sans, from a distance. Alphys tore her eyes from the monitor and saw he was headed for her dimensional closet. “That’s what the Gaster Blaster’s for.” He opened the door to the closet and looked in, but did not go inside.

“You can’t kill Frisk!” Alphys raised her voice again. She recoiled when Sans turned on her suddenly, any interest he’d had in the closet gone. For an instant, the mood shifted. The air itself felt heavier. Alphys couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a flicker of light inside Sans’ skull.

The moment passed. “I have to,” he said, with the weary kind of patience an adult had when explaining things to a child. “Look, whatever Frisk you knew, this isn’t them… Or it’s not only them. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I just have to.”

“You can’t.” Alphys’ voice sounded uncertain to her own ears. “I’ll call Undyne.” Alphys reached for her cell phone. “She’ll capture the human- Frisk. She’ll capture Frisk, and then we can just… We can figure this out.”

“Undyne is dead,” Sans said, plainly. “The human killed her.” He let the words hang there and then watched her, waiting.

Alphys waited for Sans to amend that statement - to, maybe, add the punchline, as unfunny a joke as it would be. Sans said nothing. Alphys shook her head.

“I can show you,” said Sans, turning his head to the monitor, where Gyftrot’s dust swirled in a passing breeze. “I’d rather not, but it’s recorded.”

“No,” Alphys said, quickly. She needed to sit again, but the chair was still on its side. She sat on the floor.

“My brother’s gone, too,” said Sans, in lieu of a hand on her shoulder.

Alphys’ world had collapsed into the idea of Undyne not being in it. Mention of Papyrus brought her back. “Mettaton?” she asked. Sans didn’t answer immediately, and his silence was a physically painful thing. “Is he-”

“Destroyed,” said Sans.

It lacked the same punch as the news of Undyne, but she imagined that was only because things were already as bad as they possibly could be. “Less than an hour ago, everything was perfect…”

“I’m sorry,” Sans said again, giving the words room to breathe before he continued, like he couldn’t emphasize them enough. “I’ve got a room like your closet behind my house. I’ve never known that to happen… Of course, I’m not sure I’d necessarily remember if it did. There are so many timelines it’s like a, heh, plate of spaghetti. Everything that can happen will happen… somewhere.”

Alphys looked at Sans again. Really looked at him. She didn’t know this person.

Sans seemed to notice as much. “Here.” He got rid of the camera feed showing Frisk. He set her chair right and offered her a hand, which she accepted. Seated once more, she watched him go through files. Inside a folder of a folder of an otome game she never played was a password protected folder she had never seen.

“What-” Alphys began, at a loss as to why Sans had a secret, password protected folder on one of her computers.

“The password is fartmaster,” said Sans.

Of all the questions on Alphys’ tongue, that hadn’t been one of them.

“This should help get you up to speed.” Sans stood back, letting Alphys take over.

The folder appeared to be full of videos, documents, infographics. Alphys looked away from it all. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

But Sans wasn’t there.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Alphys stared into the abyss.

Her thoughts should have been on whether or not to take a step forward. Instead, they had turned to the Core. There was a thought just out of her reach, like briefly forgetting the word for a household object. She was standing on a high platform, looking down at molten red. There was something to that. She could see the shape of the thought. If she could just remember it, she could decide what came next…

“Hey.”

Alphys gave a startled yelp. She teetered away from the sound of the voice, and- Oh, no.

“Woah.” A hand caught Alphys by the back of her lab coat and pulled her back to solid ground like it was nothing. “Heh, you nearly fell. Careful.”

Alphys turned and faced a huge grin, full of teeth. “You s-startled me.”

“Undyne,” said the grin, even though Alphys hadn’t prompted for a name.

“Alphys,” said Alphys - because, for whatever reason, it looked like Undyne wanted to know.

Undyne wanted to know a lot of things. It took Alphys some time to adjust. More than once, in the beginning, she stopped to apologize, “I-I’m sorry. I’m rambling. You don’t, uh, you don’t care about that.”

But Undyne would curl her lip and pound the ground and demand she continue.

She thought Alphys was the smartest person who had ever lived. Alphys wasn’t sure what to do with such a vote of confidence. Certainly, she fumbled it, abused it more than once. The web of lies she’d spun around anime alone were far too thick to untangle.

Not that Alphys wanted to in the beginning. Having someone to sprawl out on the couch and watch her favorite television shows with was too… wonderful. In the dark, in the glow of the television, Alphys would watch Undyne watching the screen. It was with a thrill of pleasure that she imagined some other dimension where she wasn’t a coward, where she and Undyne were together. Like, together, together.

In those moments, she would blush furiously or cover her face in her hands or make up an excuse to leave the room. Sometimes, she would do all three. Always, and oddly, she would think of the Core.

Undyne didn’t mind that her thoughts wandered. “You’re a nerd,” she would tell her, but approvingly. “That’s what you eggheads are supposed to do, right? Think.” As loyal as Undyne was to Asgore, she openly appreciated how consumed Alphys appeared to be with her own work. “You should have a Royal Guard like me. Except, you know, Royal Nerds. I should talk to Asgore.”

“No, it’s all right,” insisted Alphys, horrified at the idea of explaining herself to peers. “I’ve always worked alone.”

Undyne brought it up more than once, like Alphys’ solitude was inherently wrong somehow. “Who did all the sciencey stuff before you? Are they still around? Maybe, they could pitch in sometimes.”

“No. No, it’s fine. I’ve… always been the Royal Scientist?”

That couldn’t be right.

 

\----------------------------

 

Alphys was a quick study and an even faster reader. She blazed through the hidden files Sans had shown her. She scanned them, reread the most troubling paragraphs aloud, then paused on a graph of timeline overlaps to think over what she had learned.

It was a lot to take in.

Alphys slouched over the console. She massaged her temples with the heels of her hands. There was wetness on her cheeks, she realized. There was nothing she liked about this. Absolutely nothing.

She needed to talk to Sans.

Alphys pushed away from her desk. It was difficult to say where he had disappeared off to. Snowdin, perhaps. Maybe the castle. She was ready to head for the latter when Sans himself caught her eye.

The stocky skeleton was at her nearby desktop. He was slouched back in the chair, evidently napping while the small monitor there relayed a live feed of Frisk. Frisk was in Waterfall… where Undyne should be. “That’s not Frisk,” murmured Alphys. She’d said the words to herself, but Sans stirred anyway.

He raised his shoulders in a shrug.

“I don’t know how you can sleep at a time like this.”

He shrugged again.

  
“I have questions.”

“I thought you might. That’s why I’m here and not-” he pulled a hand from his hoodie and gave a vague wave. “Where I’m, uh, supposed to be.”

Alphys didn’t like the implications there, so she ignored them. She could worry about what became of Frisk later. For now, she adjusted her glasses and broached the most obvious of questions. “How did you gather that data, exactly?”

“Who said I gathered it? It was on your computer.”

Alphys didn’t have the patience to humor him by arguing the matter. Alphys knew what was and wasn’t her work when she saw it. “I gather you have some sort of device that can-”

“Could,” Sans corrected.

“Could,” Alphys said, correcting herself with a twinge of curiosity. “A device that could measure these other dimensions.”

“Same dimension, different timelines.”

“Semantics.”

“Not really.”

“Irrelevant, then.”

“Okay.”

“So, either you have- had a device that could measure these timelines or… Were you there? For all of them?”

Sans swiveled his chair idly, left then right. He gave another shrug. “We were all there for all of them.”

“But do you remember them?”

Sans leaned his head back. He closed his eye sockets. “Not really.”

“Not really?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Then explain it to me.” It was a real effort not to get angry. Alphys wasn’t easy to annoy to the point where she was outwardly hostile, but… these were trying times. “Please?”

San’s chest rose and fell in some facsimile of a sigh. “Why?” he asked.

It was such a broad question, Alphys could only stammer at first. “Because I… I need to know,” she managed, after a moment. “I shouldn’t be here, but now that I am, well…” She squared her shoulders and stood a little straighter. It felt silly - especially since Sans wasn’t even looking at her - but it also felt like the right thing to do. “You need my help… I think.”

Sans made a sound that might have been a laugh. Alphys wasn’t entirely sure. He stood, though, looking once more at the computer monitor - where the human that looked like Frisk was harassing poor Gerson. “It’ll be easier to show you than to explain.”

Sans held out a hand. Before Alphys could wonder why, she had taken it. He gave her a tug, as if using her as leverage to rise from his chair. He did stand, but he didn’t leave the chair. It was more like the chair left him. The floor left both of them. The whole room became a swirling tunnel of yellow and cyan characters - numbers, letters, sheets of code that fell over Alphys like a shroud.

This was how she died.

Then her feet crunched down into something. She was very cold and aware, again, of Sans’ hand in her own. She took this moment to redouble her grip, clutching at the front of his hoodie as her legs decided they’d rather not be legs.

“Huh.” Sans pulled his hand from her own. He settled his hands down on her shoulders. “That’s it. We’re here. Sorry, I forgot you’d never traveled that way before.” His tone suggested he’d forgotten no such thing. There was some genuine amusement in his grin as he forcibly separated Alphys from himself, easing her down to her knees.

The cold wetness of snow soaking through her lab coat brought Alphys to her senses. They were in Snowdin. “How did we get here?”

She looked up at Sans. He was fishing a keychain from one of his pockets. “I brought us here,” he said, unhelpfully, fitting a silver key into the lock on some sort of storage building.

Alphys stood, shivering in the cold as she wiped snow from her knees. “But how?” she insisted. “Did we… was that some sort of teleportation?”

Sans pushed the door open. “Come on. It’s warmer inside.”

That was, most decidedly, not an answer to her question, but Alphys followed him indoors anyway.

It was warmer inside. The room was bright and tiled and mostly barren save for some sort of rectangular device in a corner, covered in a tarp. Alphys moved toward it without giving the matter a second thought.

“Here.”

Sans caught her by the shoulder. She turned, saw that he was holding a laptop. Where he’d gotten it from, she hadn’t the faintest. The only thing in the room aside from the tarp covered device was a series of drawers - all of which were closed. She accepted it anyway. Alphys stood there with it for a few moments before, slowly, finding a spot on the floor to sit down.

Sans just stood there. How awkward.

Alphys opened the laptop. It prompted her for a password. “Fartmaster?”

“Fartmaster.”

Alphys typed in the characters. She was faced with a desktop with a generic white wallpaper and a series of folder icons. She clicked the first. “What language is this?” she asked, opening the first document. “Sans, I can’t read this.”

“Yes you can,” Sans said, sounding uncharacteristically aggravated.

Alphys wasn’t one to argue. She looked back at the screen and… oh. She could read it. “Sans, what-”

“I need to go check on the humans’ progress,” said Sans. “I’ll be back. Take your time.”

He was gone before Alphys could object.

Alphys curled up against the wall and started to read. The report was by Dr. Gaster. Her thoughts turned to the Core.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Dr. Gaster was brilliant. He had only become the Royal Scientist during her last year at school but, for that year, there was nothing Alphys thought about more than working at his side. During class, she sketched those thoughts out in the margins of her notes. There she was, standing with Dr. Gaster, accepting an award from King Asgore for her aid in construction of the Core.

She even gained some popularity - or, at least, dinotaku23 did - with the underclassman, writing RPF. Nothing so tasteless as self-insert - just a few multi-chaptered slash fics between him and Asgore.

In the end, Alphys was a scientist first, of course. When Dr. Gaster paid a visit to the school’s labs, she felt butterflies in her stomach only briefly. He observed in silence as the Dean prompted questions about her engineering projects - the prototypes for shelled ghosts. And, oh, there was just so much to explain.

Dr. Gaster leaned down with her over her work and nodded with interest and a smile. Granted, there was a distinct possibility that he couldn’t not smile. Sometimes, that seemed to be a thing with skeletons.

He must have liked something she said, though. After so little time together, Alphys already had a job lined up before she even left school.

The lab was in Hotland, with a clear view of the Core in its infancy. Amazing. She couldn’t wait to start working on it. Already, she could see her name in the history books. Her name would be the answer to multiple choice questions on pop quizzes. Kids would take field trips and the tour guide would explain her contribution to the world they lived in. It was… a dream.

And it would stay a dream.

“Oh, we don’t need you at the Core,” she was told. “We’ve got about a dozen monsters down there already. A-core-ding to them, that’s plenty.” Gaster, himself, didn’t actually tell her this - but, he was there for it.

Gaster spoke a language Alphys had never heard before. And Alphys was at least, somewhat, familiar with most languages. The world they lived in underground was not a terribly big one. It was a melting pot by necessity. Even so, she couldn’t understand Gaster - though, he gave every indication he could understand everyone else. Even so, any communicating that needed to be done was done through hand written notes or Sans.

Sans was Gaster’s younger brother and, proverbial, right hand. He seemed about Alphys’ age, but she had never seen him at school. His existence was something of a disappointment to Alphys who had entertained fantasies of being Gaster’s closest confidant right up until being faced with the harsh realities of nepotism.

If Gaster was in the lab, Sans was with him. Back and forth they’d go, talking in that strange language with its sudden highs and its lows and its halting syllables. If Gaster wasn’t there, Sans was cutting up, lying down, or missing altogether. Worse that that, he was very hard to hate.

On Gaster’s behalf, Sans kept Alphys occupied with a steady influx of busy work - pieces of much larger projects, pieces far too small to do anything with beyond the straightforward and obvious. Despite the better efforts of Alphys’ subconscious, she didn’t even sort of dislike him for piling her down with the stuff of menial labor nightmares.

Socializing with her peers had always been a chore for Alphys. Sans, though - he was easy to get along with. He told jokes, whether you laughed or not. He went out to eat after work whether you came or not. There was no pressure to make an effort at camaraderie. He was going to treat you the same regardless of whether you wanted to be his friend.

For her part, Alphys joined him for dinner once or twice a week. He had a good head for hypotheticals and theories. He was a pleasant enough conversationalist - if a bit frustrating. Any attempt to talk about the Core always devolved into quantum physics and puns. Either that or endless talk of his brothers. (He had two, apparently.) Still, when he was present, conscious and not snacking, he made for a decent lab partner.

And then, one day, Sans placed a new project on her desk. He apologized when he did, his hands hesitating atop the blueprint he had just unfolded. “Come find me or my brother if you need any help, okay?”

It was the first time Dr. Gaster had been at Alphys’ disposal. It was flattering - even if the work was less than savory.

But progress demanded sacrifice. Everything paled in comparison to the fate of monster-kind. The fallen humans didn’t matter. The fallen monsters shouldn’t have mattered. Alphys’ feelings certainly didn’t matter. That last one held especially true, hammered in hard when Gaster berated her for her failures.

She had learned his language by then. She couldn’t speak it, but she could understand it. It was easy enough to understand when you opened your mind to it - let the words unfold in your head like pictures.

“That is unacceptable,” he told her, the first and only time she suggested her work might not ever bear fruit. That was the gist of what he had said, anyway. What he really said was beyond words. It filled up Alphys’ head and weighed down heavy on her chest. “Get back to work.”

Alphys didn’t object. She looked down at the syringe she held. “I don’t, um… I don’t know where to even start.” She hated to even suggest it, but, “If I could just try it on monsters…”

Dr. Gaster inclined his head at that - a gesture more weary than it was curious. “Absurd. You would, what? Ask for volunteers?”

“Not living ones…”

“And that’s why you’ve been working with ghosts.”

Alphys cringed, reminded of her most recent failure… Well. Series of failures. “A body I build is never going to be the same,” she insisted. “When I say monsters that aren’t living, I was thinking something more along the lines of fallen-”

“No,” said Dr. Gaster. A refusal would have been bad enough, but the way he looked at her… He was surprised, disgusted even.

Alphys shrank under his gaze. She looked at the floor until he had gone.

“I’ve suggested the same thing,” said Sans. He’d been there for the whole thing and had stayed behind, hands shoved into the pockets of his lab coat. “Don’t let him get you down. He’s under a lot of pressure.”

“Who from?” Alphys asked, sinking down into her chair. She dropped the syringe onto her desk and frowned at it. “Construction of the Core was finished faster than… anyone could have anticipated.” And without Alphys’ help.

“It was finished ages ago, if we’re being honest.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No.” Sans looked over his shoulder, as if checking to make sure they were really alone. He lowered his voice. “It was finished ages ago. If anything, we just excavated and put the finishing touches on the thing.”

“San’s, what-”

“We… need help.”

The Core was more important than Alphys could have possibly imagined.

At least it was to Gaster. Alphys had her doubts - not about the severity of the situation, but about the solution. She felt it would be wiser to spread out their efforts in case one failed. Sans tended to agree with her but always seemed to defer to his older brother. Alphys couldn’t fault him for it. Standing up to people wasn’t exactly one of her strengths.

She counted herself lucky that Sans was receptive to her concerns. He didn’t have his brother’s odd moral hangups. It would be fair to say Dr. Gaster hated humans by default. Whenever one was captured, he was the one who… collected it. Given the nature of their research and the state in which her subjects were presented to her, Alphys had no delusions about what that meant.

Sans was more pragmatic when it came to monsters and humans. “I just want to fix things and go home,” Sans would say with a yawn, whenever his sympathies were called into question.

More than once Alphys had asked where 'home' was. He never did tell her. Half the time he deflected with a joke. The other half, he insisted upon its irrelevance.

“Sorry, pal. My brother is already annoyed I shared as much as I did.”

Dr. Gaster did warm up to her over the years. As warm as he was willing to get with a coworker anyway. She never did ask him about his hometown or meet the third brother. Their relationship was one based purely on the job at hand. He respected her, and that meant a lot. No one aside from Sans worked with him as closely as she did.

Other people knew what they were working toward, but they didn’t know as much as she did. They couldn’t. They couldn’t begin to comprehend how important the work in Hotland was. They shouldn’t have to.

It kept Alphys up at night. Sometimes she fell asleep at her desk like Sans. Sometimes there would be a cup of cold coffee sitting there for her when she woke. Once, she opened her eyes to find Gaster looking down at her.

“Oh! Oh, s-sorry, Dr. Gaster. I must have-”

But Dr. Gaster shook his head and raised a hand. “Sleep if you need to. Work late if you have to.” He was smiling at her. He was always smiling, of course, but Alphys liked to think there was affection there, concern maybe.

It was equal parts concern and affection that Alphys felt when they were out of time, when they stood together on the catwalk above the Core.

“Sans is right, sir,” said Alphys, dizzy with anxiety as she stood there in the steam heat, clipboard clutched to her chest. “We should do more trials.”

“We’ve done trials,” said Gaster.

“We should do a test run with someone else,” insisted Alphys.

“Who?” asked Gaster.

‘Papyrus,’ Alphys wanted to say, but only because she didn’t know Papyrus. Losing him felt more abstract. It wasn’t her place to suggest the third brother, though. She knew, also, that there had been discussion of it. They were not only concerned for sentimental reasons, but also because they didn’t feel he had the character to do what needed to be done.

That was the crux of the problem, really. If they succeeded in this… They would need someone on the other side. Someone who knew what to do.

Alphys could have volunteered, but she kept her head down when the subject came up and was thankful no one ever asked if she was willing. Gaster was willing, but only because he, openly, had the utmost confidence in his own plan. Sans was willing, but likely only out of affection for his brothers. Even if things worked perfectly, it was very unlikely whoever went in would return.

“If it doesn’t work, who’s going to recalibrate and try again? Me? You’re gonna trust me to see that through? Alphys by herself isn’t exactly a team of scientists. You’re too important bro. It’s gotta be me.”

“It will work,” Gaster assured them both. Still, they went with Sans.

When Alphys had proposed monster volunteers, she had imagined strangers. Applying her own work to a coworker… Well, that was hardly ideal.

Injecting Determination into the heart seemed too extreme. Better to do these things gradually. Alphys had only worked with ghosts and machines - certainly, not with skeletons. This was an eventuality she had chosen to ignore. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t planned for something of the sort, though.

She devised a gun for intraosseous injections. The first couple of test runs were, admittedly, a bit worrying.

“I’d like to throw you a bone, but…” Sans backed away from the femur procured for testing, now in shards on the floor. “No,” he amended, flatly.

Alphys worked the kinks out soon enough. Gaster was there for the first injection; he showed a clinical sort of interest, offering Alphys measured encouragement to continue. She did, of course. Backing out was no longer an option. All of their efforts had been leading up to this.

In the days that followed, they were all consumed by their work. Sans took the same number of midday naps, but even he spent more time in the lab. Alphys had expected more napping, honestly. The Determination wasn’t taking as well as she had hoped.

“This is why I wanted to run more tests,” she complained.

Sans didn’t much appreciate her sharing her concerns with him while she was performing more injections. “You know, for a doctor, you have a lousy bedside manner.”

“Sorry.”

It was Gaster who was more receptive to her complaints - which was new. She caught him alone, (not uncommon) sitting outside for no discernible purpose other than to stare vacantly off into the distance. (very uncommon, very odd.)

“This is a mess,” Alphys complained, mostly to herself. But, no, with everything that was at stake. She dropped the clipboard and the folders she was carrying at Gasters’ feet. They didn’t have far to fall, but the thud was dramatic enough to get his attention. “This whole thing is a mess,” she said again, louder this time. Some of the papers blew from the folder. She hurried after them.

“I know.”

Gaster hadn’t said those words exactly, of course. She felt them though; the complete agreement, the dejection - it was all there.

“It has been from the start.” Alphys pressed on - not accusing, just acknowledging her own disillusion. A paper that had escaped her fluttered off toward the Core. “Why?”

Gaster hesitated. “Time is…” He made a vague hand motion. ‘Weird,’ it implied.

Alphys nodded in agreement. She knew the rather nebulous nature of the task at hand. She knew what was at stake. She knew, more or less, the time and place Gaster had come from to ensure the worst didn’t come to pass.

“No.” Gaster slumped where he sat. He looked at Alphys, inclined his head. He seemed to decide something then. “I’ve been here before.”

“What do you mean?”

“We had a whole team once, Asgore’s full support and resources. At one point, the Core wasn’t finished. With time travel, the big projects became trivial. The leg work, entirely unnecessary. Now all that matters are the fine details- which is what it always had to come down to. Even now, I have all the time I need. I just have to not give up hope… Which should be easy. It really should.”

“Sorry, sir… I’m not sure I follow.”

“We’ve run more tests.” Dr. Gaster borrowed Alphys’ tone of frustration. “We’ve run countless tests. Testing on monsters out of this time period would be frowned upon, but that’s of little consequence. Three brothers, infinite tries. Sans, then Papyrus, then it fails… again… I go home again, record my findings again, try again.” Dr. Gaster’s shoulder’s slumped further, his voice grew quieter. It was difficult to tell if he was still speaking to Alphys.

“We came to fix an anomaly and became an anomaly. It’s odd to think anything exists out of this stretch of time. I’m very aware of myself as a constant. The variables are… becoming more abstract.”

Alphys realized she must have sat down at some point. Her lab coat was getting red dirt on it. Her tail was clutched in her hands like she was a child again, about to be reprimanded by her parents. “Have I… Have I always been on your team?”

“Hmm?” Dr. Gaster turned his head a bit more in her direction, like he’d forgotten she was there despite having just spoken to her. “You were on the original team. Otherwise, you’re a relatively new addition. You’re here while I… work out some things.”

“Oh,” said Alphys. She stared at the ground. She stood. Her legs started to carry her back into the lab, but her mind caught up with them. She hesitated. “Have I helped?”

“Hmm?” Dr. Gaster had to direct his attention back toward her and take a moment to process what she had just asked. “Of course,” he said, too quickly for comfort. “Yes, of course. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

Alphys’ hands made an unconscious grab for her own tail. She began to say something else but walked back inside. She went back to her desk. She woke her computer up and tried to return to what she’d been working on.

The crash from the monitor toppling into the floor was what drew Sans. “Woah,” he called from the hall, holding the door frame as he surveyed the, only partly intentional, mess Alphys had made of her desk. “You okay?”

“Does it matter?” Alphys asked, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You know… if you’d just told me my timeline was a test run, I’d like to think I would have… I would have still done my part to help. I mean, unless that’s part of it. Unless I just work better under pressure.” Alphys doubted that, though. The idea that they had contemplated how to put her at her most efficient felt like flattery. Alphys was done with that sort of self confidence. Just now, feeling important made her feel stupid. “It doesn’t matter,” she amended.

“What are you talking about?” asked Sans.

And Alphys told him - let him know there was no point dancing around the truth anymore because she knew now… Which was how she found out that Sans didn’t know. And, as hard as Alphys had taken it… he, understandably, took it worse.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

  
Alphys closed the document written by Gaster and another by Sans and another by herself. She closed the laptop and stood, moving to the covered device she was now certain was some sort of time machine. The sheet slid off with a tug, pulling around the machine’s base.

Even though she knew almost nothing of how it worked, it was unquestionably a fine piece of technology. Alphys would have liked to study it, but there was little point in that now. Maybe once this was all over… If it was ever over.

There was no dust on the machine. If nothing else, Sans, clearly, hadn’t given up on it. Without Gaster, it had entered this time period poorly. Suddenly, she had a strangely vivid memory of telling him something cliche, like, it wasn’t his fault. It was, though. To be fair, it was a lot of people’s faults - a whole landslide of faults.

Alphys included. She shouldn’t have told him. Gaster shouldn’t have told her. Maybe he had before and it had all worked out in the end; Sans went into the Core, Papyrus went into the Core, and Gaster went home with new data to add to old. Maybe he’d told Alphys (or people like her) countless times and it had just never backfired.

She could remember the Core now. It was a foggy memory - like a dream. If she thought too hard on it, it got away. She had to clear her mind and let it unfold for her in pictures and snatches of action. She remembered Sans' refusal to go. He had waited for his brother to explain himself without being prompted. When he couldn’t wait anymore, he confronted Gaster himself.

And Alphys had agreed, because why shouldn’t Gaster be the one to go? If none of this mattered. If he was so certain time was a linear thing he could rewind and replay like a tape. If he and his peers back home were so sure of that, why not test on monsters? It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d volunteered himself. Was that just another way to ease necessary events along? Undoubtedly.

“This is the only way.” Gaster was anything but apologetic. “I’ve explained myself before. It does nothing but waste time.”

Alphys could feel the dry heat on her skin. She saw ice fall into the Core, saw Sans and Gaster near the edge, figures warped by the steam. Gaster’s hand was on San’s back. Alphys wasn’t sure what was said or if she even heard. She remembered that she hadn’t caught Sans napping in some time. He was in an uncharacteristically foul mood. He shrugged off Gaster’s hand.

There was arguing. There was shouting. There was a struggle.

Best case scenario, it was an accident. Worst case scenario, it was a mistake Sans immediately regretted. Gaster fell. Alphys rushed to help, stopping short when Sans caught his brother with magic, slinging him up and out of the Core - back toward the platform. Sans knelt down, holding the platform with one hand and Gaster’s forearm with the other. He called for help, and Alphys began to close the distance between them, again. Then she stopped, again.

The clearest image Alphys had of what had happened at the Core was of Gaster. It was always so difficult with skeletons, but she would have sworn he looked surprised. San’s fingers were cutting through his forearm, caught between radius and ulna like his bones were made of soft paste. Alphys would see it again with the amalgamates. His matter was struggling for its continued existence but unable to hold its form. It adhered to what it could, in this instance: Sans. The rest…

Alphys didn’t remember the rest. She didn’t remember much of Gaster either. That probably said a lot.

 

  
Alphys took care to replace the sheet and leave the machine as she had found it. Not that it mattered. If Sans could fix it, he would have already. That much, she remembered much more clearly. Sans had said as much to her before he realized she remembered none of the events that led to the current state of things.

It made sense now - the files on her own computer, the backup files here. She’d hid some, likely deleted most. Alphys didn’t have to remember and, because she didn’t have to, she chose to forget.

“I’m such a coward,” she groaned. She’d read enough. “Sans-” she called, almost expecting him to answer. Even after reading all she had, she was still a bit unclear on the extent of any abilities he’d unintentionally been imbued with.

He was not omnipotent, it seemed. Which was… inconvenient.

Calling his cellphone would have been almost as good, but Alphys didn’t seem to have his number. Which was… also inconvenient.

Alphys sighed and resigned herself to taking the long way home. It was just as well, really. She wasn’t sure she could stomach teleporting again.

The Ferryperson was, at the very least, still alive. They seemed altogether unconcerned with the human’s rampage. Alphys didn’t ask why. She had her own concerns, and her brain refused to turn from them.

 

\--------------------------

 

Alphys knew the skeleton’s name was Sans. She wasn’t sure where she knew the name from. She simply knew it before she was told.

Maybe Undyne had told her. She was the one who barged in with him slung over one armored shoulder. “Can you fix this?” she asked, dumping him rather unceremoniously, a few feet from Alphys.

For several long moments, Alphys could only stare and try to keep her heart from pounding out of her chest. Was this a monster that had fallen down? Did Undyne know about the others in the lab hidden beneath their feet?

“I found him on patrol. He seemed confused, said he was on his way here, and then-” Undyne indicated his motionless state on the floor with a wave of her hand. She was breathing heavily - not really a fan of making the walk to Hotland, herself. “Can you fix him?”

Alphys hadn’t the faintest as to what Undyne expected her to do. “I’m not a doctor.”

Undyne said nothing, only stared at her impassively.

“I mean I’m not that kind of… All right, I’ll see what I can do.”

Undyne left to get a drink of water. Alphys did what she could- which amounted to just sort of prodding at Sans where Undyne had left him. Closer inspection proved that he had not fallen over in anything but the most literal sense. Despite wearing a coat in Hotland, she didn’t suppose he’d overheated.

“He sleeps a lot,” Undyne offered, returning from getting a drink. Her face dripped with water.

“That’s probably it,” said Alphys, but only because Undyne looked troubled. “I’ll, uh… I’ll keep him here for a while. Just in case.”

So, Undyne continued with her patrol and Sans stayed where he was. Exactly where he was, because Alphys hadn’t possessed the foresight to ask Undyne maybe help her move him somewhere better than the middle of her floor.

Fortunately, Sans wasn’t out long. Unfortunately, he didn’t make much sense when he woke up.

He asked for his brother. Alphys didn’t know his brother, but Undyne did. She offered to call Undyne, have her get in touch with him.

But, no, that wasn’t the brother he meant. “Gaster,” he insisted, head in his hands like it ached.

“I don’t know him,” Alphys said, hovering close and feeling entirely out of her element.

“Your boss!”

“I don’t… have one?” Alphys was completely out of her element here. “I mean, I’m the Royal Scientist, so I suppose King Asgore-”

“What are you-” The frustration left Sans’ voice. He looked up at her. “You’re the Royal Scientist,” he said, as if only then realizing it.

“Your eye is…” Alphys drew forward with interest. It was flickering, maybe… faintly.

Sans looked down at his arms. He opened and closed his hands.

“Are you all right?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, they sounded entirely unhelpful. Obviously, he wasn’t all right.

 

  
\-----------------------------

 

 

None of them were all right.

She should be doing something. Not running from the truth.

Alphys entered her lab. “Sans!” she called. There was no answer. She considered checking downstairs, but he had already retrieved what he had needed, hadn’t he? That horrible weapon. Alphys had found no notes on the Gasterblaster, but she knew something like that wasn’t built without a purpose. Maybe it had been used back in Gaster’s own time or… well, someone had collected the humans for their experiments.

Alphys wondered, briefly, who had collected the humans in Gaster’s stead.

The camera feed was still playing as it had been when she left. Alphys went to it, switching through feeds to try and find what she was looking for. The damage the human had done was evident on every empty screen.

Still, she couldn’t blame Frisk. This wasn’t the work of Frisk. Alphys still wasn’t sure what she planned to do, but- she _really_ hoped Sans hadn’t had to use the Gaster Blaster yet.

Alphys switched to the feed nearest the castle, then the Core, then- Mettaton. Her entire body went rigid. Not destroyed - not yet - but transforming in front of the human.

Alphys didn’t stop to wonder why Sans had lied to her. She moved as fast as she could for the door.


	5. Chapter 5

Alphys had explained herself twice now, but no one cared. They were too excited to have their family back - regardless of what they had become. Once the excitement of having their family back and heading to the surface wore off… Maybe they would be angry then.

She watched the nearest family, wagging tails, sniffing, hugging. They were happy. So happy. It would be worth it, Alphys decided. If they were angry, she deserved that. This was still the right thing to do.

Alphys jumped as arms wrapped around her from behind, hoisting her off the snowy ground. This was it. Retribution was coming sooner than expected.

“I’m proud of you,” said Undyne, giving her a rib crushing squeeze before lowering her back down.

The blood was rushing to Alphys’ face. She turned and struggled for the right combination of words. “I should have told you. I should have told everyone. I’m sorry I-”

“I’m proud of you,” Undyne repeated, louder this time. “Save the explanations for later, huh? Today, you did good.”

“I should have done this sooner.”

“Yeah, well, you did it today.” Undyne cuffed her on the shoulder. It was equal parts painful and endearing. “It was brave.”

 

\----------------------------

 

Alphys walked to the castle, still holding a piece of her greatest creation. It was a panel of metal from the torso. Nothing important or salvageable, but the solidness of it between her claws kept her going. There was a human out here, after all. If she ran into them, she wouldn’t have a chance. She couldn’t fight. The only thing she could do was be a huge disappointment. dinotaku23 would be ashamed.

Even now, Alphys wasn’t entirely sure what she aimed to do. Getting to Asgore seemed paramount. If she crossed paths with Sans on the way, so be it.

“Alphys?”

Alphys looked up to find Sans seated between a pillar and a window.

Oh… Well then. Alphys rather wished she hadn’t come across him. Confronting people wasn’t something she had ever been much good at - and confronting him now felt petty. Now wasn’t the time for blame.

“You lied to me!”

Sans leaned to one side, letting the panel of metal hit the wall. “Wha-” he began, but then saw what she had thrown. “Oh, yeah.”

That he’d initially drawn a blank on what Alphys had to be mad about, that the lie he’d told her hadn’t been some important piece of a greater plan made it hurt more. “He was my friend.” She meant to shout at him, but the words just came out out of her mouth useless and sad. She slumped. She swayed on her feet.

“I know,” said Sans.

Alphys looked up to find he’d stood and moved closer. The panel she’d thrown was in his hands, held out like a peace offering. Alphys realized, yes, she wanted it back very much. She snatched it away and hugged it to her chest. She tried glaring, but it just wasn’t in her to lash out anymore. “Why?”

“It’s all I know to do.” Sans seemed to realize she had no idea what he was getting at. He looked at the floor, paused a moment, then continued. “I’ve tried everything.”

“I’m sure there’s something-”

“I’ve tried everything,” he repeated, interrupting her. “You helped. You took the video from your surveillance cameras and backed it up on hard drives in interdimensional casings. Everything that can happen, will happen… The best thing I can do is wait.”

“For what?”

“For everything to happen… This happens a lot, this timeline and variations of it. I think, maybe, if it happens enough, they’ll get bored.”

“Who? Frisk?”

“I don’t think it’s Frisk,” said Sans, sounding reluctant to admit that. “I think someone else is responsible for the resets and the alternate timelines and the… everything.”

“So everything stays the same until who or whatever is past the Core gets bored of us?” Alphys raised the metal plate. “Even if our friends die?”

“And family.” Sans went back to the wall and sat down. “Don’t worry. It’ll reset. It always resets.”

“And what about when it doesn’t?”

“It will.”

“Then why bother?”

“That’s a good question,” Sans said with a brief and mirthless laugh. “I feel like I have to, I guess? Even if I’m just going through the motions. And, I’ll tell ya, I’m bone tired of going through the motions.”

“I don’t-” But Alphys couldn’t finish that thought. She had probably said it before. Even if the circumstances of her being here weren’t the same, Sans had likely explained all of this to her many times in the past. There were countless gaps in her knowledge on the subject to fill. There was little time for that now, and fewer reasons. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Sans asked, sounding a bit exasperated with how quickly she was cycling between blame and apologies.

“I… I should never have let myself forget. I was… I was part of the team, and…”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t point any fingers about taking breaks. You don’t think I’d take one from this if I could? I love breaks.”

“It doesn’t seem fair.”

“I know. I like breaks way more than you.”

Alphys sat down against the wall, a foot or two from Sans. They sat in silence for a while, only broken when she pondered aloud, “Well, this is new, right? Me crossing over timelines?”

“Maybe. I couldn’t find a record of it anywhere, but I’m not the best at keeping records,” said Sans. “It’s unusual, at least.”

“And what, uh, what happened to the original me from this timeline?”

Sans cast a measured sidelong glance at Alphys. “Unless you being here overwrote her, I haven’t seen you for a while, so I think you already…”

“Oh.”

They lapsed into silence - a much less comfortable one this time. Eventually, a sound echoing down the hall drew their attention.

“Was that-” began Alphys.

“I don’t think so,” said Sans.

“Oh,” said Alphys. Then, it occurred to her to ask, “What happens next?”

“I fight the human.”

“I don’t think Frisk-”

“If they made it this far, they’re pretty Determined. The best I can do is try to frustrate them as much as I can until they kill me.”

“Sans-” Alphys began, but she had no right to give him grief over going knowingly to his own death. “I’ll stay and help.”

“Thanks, but everything needs to stay the same.” Sans voice faltered a bit, sounding uncertain. “If they want to test their skill, let them test it. If they’re just curious to see what comes next… It’s not good, but… If they’re really that tired of happy endings.”

Silence again.

“I wish my brother was here,” Sans said, finally, so quietly, it took Alphys a moment to realize he’d said it.

“Gaster?”

Sans perked up a bit at that, like he enjoyed hearing someone else say the name - but, “No, he’s here. Sort of.” He rubbed at his left eye socket, absently.

Alphys reached out and put a hand on Sans’ shoulder. She meant it to be comforting, but it seemed like poor timing. She pulled her hand away with a mumbled apology.

“Sorry I lied to you.”

“Sorry we’re stuck in a time loop… Two consecutive time loops?”

“Three, I think.”

“Three?!”

“I think there was one in the middle with, like, a flower?”

Alphys slumped against the wall like a bag of trash. “Oh.”

“Look on the bright side,” offered Sans. “The first two ended.”

Alphys tended to be a pessimist by nature, but she still felt a smile tug at her mouth. “Well, until then, what can I do?”

“Wake me up when Frisk gets here?” Sans slumped down against the wall, pulling up his hood and settling into the soft bulk of his coat.

“I guess it’s been a long day,” said Alphys.

“The longest,” said Sans.


End file.
